The following relates generally to controlling home appliances and, more particularly, relates to a system and method for allowing a user to save, recall, and transfer both media playback and device setting states for one or more sets of home appliances.
The ability to save and recall a series of commands for a particular set of home appliances is well known in the form of macro commands, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,751. By way of example, a macro can be used to transmit a sequence of command codes to power on all appliances of a home entertainment center, to access pay-per-view events via a set-top box (STB), etc. Additionally, suspending and resuming a media playback state or device settings state for a particular home appliance is known in the art. For instance, it is customary to pause and play media as well as preset device settings (such as sound equalization, volume, or color balance settings) for individual home appliances in a particular home entertainment center. The use of remote control devices adapted to perform macro commands and remotely suspend and resume media and device states is also well known in the art.
A typical home contains multiple home entertainment centers, each center generally including multiple home appliances which are operable by a user to play the same desired media. For instance, a particular user may have access to home entertainment centers in a living room, home office, and one or more bedrooms of her home, each of which may be capable of playing the same desired media (i.e., television broadcast, video, music, images, etc.) using different appliances in each location. Currently, if the user desires to save a media state (such as the playback state of a movie, song or music playlist, or a particular television show) and associated device settings from one home entertainment center, and later recall, or transfer the saved media and device states to the same, or a different home entertainment center, it would involve significant time and many laborious steps to be performed by the user.
Accordingly, it is desired to provide a system and method that functions to save and recall media and device setting states and which is able to transfer those states from one home entertainment center to another such that the same or substantially similar media playback experience is possible across all available entertainment centers.